A few years still later, a young debutante was to sing for the first time before the public in Weber’s Freischutz. At the rehearsal preceding the representation of the evening, she sang in a manner which made the members of the orchestra at once lay down their instruments to clap their hands in rapturous applause. It was our poor, plain little girl here again, who now had grown up and was to appear before the public in the role of Agatha. I saw her at the evening representation. She was then in the prime of youth, fresh, bright, and serene as a morning in May—perfect in form—her hands and her arms peculiarly graceful—and lovely in her whole appearance, through the expression of her countenance, and the noble simplicity and calmness of her manners. In fact she was charming. We saw not an actress, but a young girl full of natural geniality and grace. She seemed to move, speak, and sing without effort or art. All was nature and harmony. Her song was distinguished especially by its purity, and the power of soul which seemed to swell in her tones. Her “mezzo voice” was delightful. In the night scene where Agatha, seeing her lover come, breathes out her joy in rapturous song, our young singer on turning from the window, at the back of the theatre, to the spectators again, was pale for joy. And in that pale joyousness she sang with a burst of outflowing love and life that called forth, not the mirth, but the tears of the auditors. From this time she was the declared favorite of the Swedish public, whose musical tastes and knowledge are said not to be surpassed. And, year after year, she continued so, though, after a time, her voice, being overstrained, lost somewhat of its freshness, and the public being satiated, no more crowded the house when she was singing. Still, at that time, she could be heard singing and playing more delightfully than ever in Pamina (in Zauberflote) or in Anna Bolena, though the opera was almost deserted. She evidently sang for the pleasure of the song. By that time she went to take lessons of Garcia, in Paris, and so give the finishing touch to her musical education. There she acquired that warble in which she is said to have been equalled by no singer, and which could be compared only to that of the soaring and warbling lark, if the lark had a soul. And then the young girl went abroad and sang on foreign shores and to foreign people. She charmed Denmark, she charmed Germany, she charmed England. She was caressed and courted every where, even to adulation. At the courts of kings, the houses of the great and noble, she was feasted as one of the grandees of nature and art. She was covered with laurels and jewels. But friends wrote of her, “In the midst of these splendors she only thinks of her Sweden, and yearns for her friends and her people.”